Electronic documents are often submitted in the course of business to various entities, including individuals, corporations, and government agencies. Often the subject matter of these electronic documents is derived from multiple data sources. For example, an entities' tax return includes numerical fields or data points derived from such data as total income and total expenses. If more data for a particular number (e.g., total expenses) is requested, often via an attached note, the entity in response would either send an electronic copy or a hard copy of the data referencing the request and the field (e.g., total expenses). More often than not, the attached items are lost or the data does not adequately reference the field, which results in costly delays and confusion.
Although some applications allow for electronically attaching data within the electronic document, such as a note or file, the data is only associated with a specific location within the document, such as the x and y coordinates of a particular page. As a result, when additional pages are added or the document is dimensionally altered, the attached data may be repositioned to a different location than was originally intended, and no longer references the correct field or data point that the data was intended to annotate.